Dan’s Mission in Brazil

It’s been over 47 years since I left home to go preach the gospel in Brazil. When it’s been that long since a person has done something, it has “old geezer” written all over it. I guess instead of avoiding the truth I’ll embrace my geezerhood and try to make the best of it.

Back in those days when a young man started to plan for college and a mission, you had to be 19 to even apply to go on a mission for the church. I was only 17 when I graduated from Ridgefield High school, so the only option was college. I attended one year at Clark Community College in Vancouver and then a second year of university at BYU, majoring in Electrical Engineering. During the summer of 1975, I decided to take a 30 day desert survival course and then go on my mission. I had already received my mission call to Brazil before leaving for the deserts of Southern Utah.

I believe it was late October when I entered the language training mission (LTM). I stayed there for the next 4 months, learning the missionary lessons and the Brazilian language. Normally, the time in the LTM was only 2 months, but Brazil was very slow at approving our visas, so we got an extra two months to learn the language as we waited for Brazil to finish the paperwork.

This is Allen Hall, where we lived. It was located on the lower campus at BYU. The much bigger Missionary Training Center near the Provo temple didn’t exist yet.

This is my district of fellow Elders. We studied together for many hours a day while the snow fell outside.

Elder Marcus, my first companion, is sitting beside me on our bunk bed.

Here, I’m trying out my gangsta door approach. It was eventually abandoned as unlikely to be effective.

Another lighter moment just before lights out. Many of these elders had not yet adjusted to wearing their garments at night.

This is a farewell party for the Fonseca district. We were jealous because they received their visas, but we were still marooned at the LTM for a while.

One memory I have of this time was the bitter-sweet experience of spending Christmas at the LTM. I missed my family and President Lee, who signed my mission call, passed away the day after Christmas. We sang a lot of Christmas carols together and felt a wonderful spirit of serving together in the LTM.

When my visa was finally approved, I flew from Salt Lake City to Sao Paolo, Brazil. I then flew to Porto Alegre and finally took a bus to my first assignment in a city called Criciuma. I left Salt Lake City wearing three white shirts because I didn’t have room for them in my suitcase. I arrived in Brazil in the middle of their summer. I thought I was going to perish of heat exhaustion.

Here I am in the city of Criciuma. It was a smallish city out in the country where most of the people were simple farmers. While there, my district of elders went on a P-day trip to the catholic mission ruins of Sao Miguel.

Here are a few of us posing by the ruins. The guy on the right had a special talent. He could say the entire pledge of allegiance with one burp. It came in quite handy when knocking on doors.

Here, I’m pretending to be a statue of a saint.

Now I’m practicing my Samuel the Lamanite approach. Fortunately, no one was shooting arrows at me.

Elder Webb was my first companion in Brazil. He taught me how to be an awesome missionary.

I also served in a small city called Alegrete. Four of us lived in a room we rented from this kind old lady and her son, who was somewhat mentally retarded. They had a little dog who was loaded with fleas that often ended up in my bed.

My last city of service was Porto Alegre, a large and busy city of nearly a million people.

My last companion was a native Brazilian named Edson de Marques. We taught a young couple who were baptized shortly before I came home.

This is Elder de Marques with the young couple. His name was Ademir Pinto Ribeiro and her name was Iara. Ademir is wearing an authentic Brazilian pala that was made for me to bring home.

In those days, missionaries were allowed to do some extra travelling on the way back to their homes. I jumped at the chance to take about a week to see some amazing sights on the way back to the USA.  My travelling companion and I made three main stops: Foz do Iguacu, a huge waterfall at the border with Paraguay, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Machu Picchu, Peru.

I took this picture of Machu Picchu. It was amazing and worth every bit of effort to travel there, but it caused some big worries in the end.

For some reason I’ll never understand, the airlines overbooked the flights leaving the Peruvian city of Cuzco, near Machu Picchu. We missed our flight to Lima and had to stay an extra day in Cuzco. The next day, the Peruvian military flew us out in a paratrooper airplane. I remember sitting in mesh netting seats holding a little tube for oxygen and wondering if I would ever get home again. I missed the big welcome my family had planned for me at the Portland airport and I couldn’t even get word to them about the delay. I arrived in Portland the next day with 1 dime in my pocket and was picked up by just my mother. It wasn’t the big reception I could have had, but I was certainly glad to be back home again.

One of the last memories of my mission was of a sacrament meeting where I was asked to speak in the Porto Alegre ward. After finishing my talk, I sat down next to the stake president on the stand. He leaned over to me and whispered in my ear, “Voce fala portugues melhor do que a maioria dos brasileiros.” Translated, this was, “You speak Portuguese better than the majority of native Brazilians.” I can’t describe how amazing it was to receive this complement from a highly educated Brazilian. Although this was not my only goal for going to Brazil, I really enjoyed learning a foreign language and I put a lot of effort into it. I read a lot of Portuguese novels and comic books on my P-days and paid attention to the native accent when I talked to the people there. This complement took little effort to give, but made a huge difference in my life and my own self-confidence. It is a great example of how a tiny bit of thoughtfulness can lift someone else immeasurably. I have never forgotten the complement and the power of giving them to those who deserve it.